‘We thought this museum project was very challenging at first, as we were given the reception area, the design shop and the auditorium’, explains Humberto Campana. ‘But we took it, as they gave us carte blanche and we loved that. The museum is very linear, almost minimal, and we really wanted to bring our universe into it. We thought the place needed something organic, focused on the materials we would use. The museum needed materialism’.

Fernando Campana continues: ‘We wanted to approach the inside with surrealism, like in the auditorium that looks like a Jackson Pollock from afar. But when you get closer and touch the material, you realize it is a handmade patchwork made out of hairy cow hide applied to the walls. For the reception area and design store, our inspiration came from the Grand Canyon. We piled wood and applied it to the walls and also created tables and other displays for the shop. The message we wanted to generate was bringing nature indoors in order to deconstruct the linearity of the museum’.

When asked about the final results, Humberto says: ‘We think we fully succeeded, we are very happy with the results. It is interesting to work with Dutch people. They are very rationalistic, and that really helped to translate our universe completely’.

Fernando comments that there are some links with their past projects to be found at the Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch, like the Leatherworks Armchair (2007) they designed for Edra and donated to the museum’s permanent collection, and the installation they made for Consentino at the Milan Furniture Fair in 2010. ‘We have re-imagined and remade them, but on a much bigger scale’, he adds.

The commission from the museum is a first for the Campanas in the Netherlands and their second large museum project in Europe, after the refurbishment of the Musée d’Orsay’s Café in Paris.

About Stedelijk Museum ’s-HertogenboschThe Stedelijk Museum ’s-Hertogenbosch will officially open its new building in the ‘Museum Quarter’ of central ‘s-Hertogenbosch on 24 May. This will give the museum a home of its own after more than 16 years, during which the SM’s presented its programme of art and design exhibitions at a former factory. The new building means there is now sufficient space for the museum’s unique ceramic and jewellery collections. The exhibition FRAMED, curated by Ted Noten, will inaugurate the site in spectacular fashion. At the same time, the British artist Julie Verhoeven will show an installation that reflects on the collection. The official reopening of the Stedelijk Museum ’s-Hertogenbosch by Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands will take place on Friday 24 May 2013. The two museums will be open to the public from Saturday 25 May 2013.